Just to refresh people’s memories, al Qaeda is the organization that flew airliners into buildings in America in 2001, killing thousands. They bombed the London subway and the Madrid train station and a nightclub in Bali, murdering hundreds. They’ve attacked our embassies and our ships. They made it plain they’d love to use biological and even nuclear weapons against us, all in the name of establishing a caliphate, the imposition of sharia law, and the final victory of Islam.

A letter discovered among Osama bin Laden’s personal belongings warned that ISIS were so extreme that Al Qaeda should disown them.

According to the Daily Mail, the 21-page letter was found in the base where the terrorist leader was shot dead by U.S. forces in 2011. It warned of a new, extreme Islamist militant group who were so brutal that they would likely damage Al Qaeda’s reputation among wavering Muslims.

The document, written by one of Bin Laden’s senior officials, went to list some of the acts of barbarism committed by ISIS, including using chemical weapons, destroying mosques and massacring the congregation of a church on Baghdad.

Bar none, the most riveting article you’ll read this week. The New Yorker’s Nicholas Schmidle interviewed principals involved in the raid to kill that porn-addicted medieval psychopath bin Laden –including members of SEAL Team 6– and put together an account of the mission from planning stages to aftermath that you won’t be able to put down. An excerpt:

The SEALs’ destination was a house in the small city of Abbottabad, which is about a hundred and twenty miles across the Pakistan border. Situated north of Islamabad, Pakistan’s capital, Abbottabad is in the foothills of the Pir Panjal Range, and is popular in the summertime with families seeking relief from the blistering heat farther south. Founded in 1853 by a British major named James Abbott, the city became the home of a prestigious military academy after the creation of Pakistan, in 1947. According to information gathered by the Central Intelligence Agency, bin Laden was holed up on the third floor of a house in a one-acre compound just off Kakul Road in Bilal Town, a middle-class neighborhood less than a mile from the entrance to the academy. If all went according to plan, the SEALs would drop from the helicopters into the compound, overpower bin Laden’s guards, shoot and kill him at close range, and then take the corpse back to Afghanistan.

In other words, no matter what was said publicly, this was a mission to kill, not capture. Fine by me. I figure anyone objecting to this is either a hopeless pacifist, someone who thinks this a law enforcement matter rather than a war, or a transnationalist who can’t stand the idea of nation-states actually defending themselves by any means more stern than a press conference, a memo of concern, and perhaps sniffing “unacceptable” if the terrorist atrocity is really bad.

(In case you haven’t noticed, I don’t have much regard for those types. None at all, actually.)

Anyway, on reading this, here are three things that jumped out at me:

After weeks of training, we were this close to having the mission turn into another Eagle Claw. Helicopters are darned difficult to control in restricted areas.

I want to meet the guy code-named “Ahmed,” the Pakistani-American who pretended to be a Pakistani cop to keep curious locals away while our guys were inside killing the world’s most wanted man. His assignment prior to this raid: a desk job.

As of the article’s writing, the President of the United States does not know who fired the kill shot(s). He didn’t ask, and the SEALs didn’t offer. Probably for security reasons. That secret may well go to the grave.

Anyway, after weeks of wondering if our government can do anything right, here’s something that shows they can, and do it superbly.

According to Egyptian lawyer Muntasar Al-Zayat, Osama bin Laden was a martyr who was innocent of mass murders committed by al Qaeda in Iraq and other Arab countries. The people of Baqubah in Diyala province, Iraq, among others would beg to disagree.

Following are excerpts from an interview with Egyptian lawyer Muntasar Al-Zayat, which aired on Faraeen TV on May 23, 3011:

Muntasar Al-Zayat: The Americans are the ones who killed Bin Laden. They killed him and, therefore, he is a martyr. He is considered a martyr because he was fighting for a cause: first, the liberation of the Hejaz from the Americans, and then the liberation of Iraq from the Americans, and the liberation of Afghanistan from the foreign invasion.

Interviewer: What about the terrorist operations carried out by Al-Qaeda, which left behind rivers of blood in Islamic countries? Who bears the responsibility for this?

Muntasar Al-Zayat: I say that Bin Laden, Allah’s mercy upon him, is innocent of those operations. Sheik Osama Bin Laden had positions with which I disagreed, but this did not prevent me from respecting and appreciating him.

[…]

I support any operation of resistance that targets American soldiers anywhere in the world.

Ideas that seem to rise from nowhere and take on a life of their own are often called “memes.” They’re those things that “everyone knows,” but they often fall apart when looked at critically. Anthropogenic global warming is one such false meme, but that’s not the topic for today.

Instead, Bill Whittle looks at several memes associated with the The Long War(1) –“mission accomplished,” and “Iraq was a distraction,” among others– and then smashes them to bits with the Hammer of Facts:

It’s like a current-affairs version of MythBusters.

There’s an old saying that, while we are entitled to our own beliefs, we are not entitled to our own facts, and Bill does a great job using fact to skewer false belief.

(1) My preferred name for this conflict, or maybe “Jihadi War.” “War on Terror” just never sounded accurate.

THREE US Navy Seals converged on Osama bin Laden as he retreated desperately into a bedroom of his Pakistan lair, video footage has revealed.

Commandos recorded the raid on tiny helmet-mounted cameras, reports from the US today say.

The 25 SEALs who raided the compound in the garrison town of Abbottabad, Pakistan on May 2 were carrying the mini cameras, CBS News said.

(…)

According to US officials who have seen images of the 40-minute operation in Abbottabad, the only firefight in the raid took place outside the main compound building, where bin Laden’s couriers opened fire and were themselves shot dead, CBS reported.

Commandos then saw bin Laden for the first time after he appeared on a third floor landing, and they fired and missed.

The terror chief then retreated into a bedroom.

The first SEAL who entered the room pulled aside bin Laden’s daughters who were there with him, while a second commando was confronted by one of his wives who either rushed him or was pushed in his direction, said CBS.

According to the report, that second commando pushed the wife out of the way and fired a round into bin Laden’s chest, and a third commando then shot bin Laden in the head.

Ron Paul says he would not have authorized the mission that led to the death of Osama bin Laden, and that President Barack Obama should have worked with the Pakistani government instead of authorizing a raid.“I think things could have been done somewhat differently,” Paul said this week. “I would suggest the way they got Khalid [Sheikh] Mohammed. We went and cooperated with Pakistan. They arrested him, actually, and turned him over to us, and he’s been in prison. Why can’t we work with the government?”

Asked by WHO Radio’s Simon Conway whether he would have given the go-ahead to kill bin Laden if it meant entering another country, Paul shot back that it “absolutely was not necessary.”

Congressman Paul later argues that we would never have done something like this in London, that we would instead have cooperated with the British. May I suggest to the congressman that comparing our closest, most trusted ally to the weak, corrupt, factionalized, largely Islamist and often backstabbing government of Pakistan is not only insulting to the British, but downright stupid?

It’s no secret that I consider Congressman Paul to be a borderline lunatic. Occasionally he makes a good point about domestic policy, such as his criticism of cronyism between government and big business, but you know what they say about broken clocks, too.

When it comes to foreign affairs, Paul is an extreme non-interventionist whose view of the world resembles a libertarian-isolationist paradise more than it does reality. His refusal to admit that overwhelming American power and the willingness to use it when necessary(1) is the only real guarantor of peace in the world is delusional. In a dangerous world and in a time of war, a “President Ron Paul” would be as damaging to American interests from the Right as President Obama is from the Left.

Given the national joy that greeted bin Laden’s assassination, let’s hope his moment of honesty marks the beginning of the end of anyone taking Representative Ron Paul seriously.